SANTO DOMINGO. - José Ramón Peralta, former Administrative Minister of the Presidency, now charged by the Public Ministry in Operation Calamar, warned engineer Bolívar Ventura that he would not collect a single cent of what the State owed his companies if he did not hand over the money they demanded for Gonzalo Castillo's political campaign.
"The accused José Ramón Peralta was present at 'La Casita', located at Ceiba Street No. 102 corner of Helios in the Bella Vista sector, National District, when Bolívar Ventura was going to deliver large sums of cash and he had made it clear to Ventura that he would not collect a penny if he did not deliver the required money," states the file of request for coercive measure.
He added that: “Indeed, Mr. Bolívar Ventura had to deliver to the structure the sum of RD$2,185,489,598.77, having to deliver from it the amount of RD$1,231,993,188.00 from the criminal actions initiated and in which the accused José Ramón Peralta actively participated,” he indicated.
According to the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (PEPCA), the "criminal structure" used the contracts that Bolívar Ventura's companies had with the Office of Supervising Engineers of State Works (Oisoe), to fraudulently make agreements recognizing debts for additional works that were not carried out.
Under this scheme, they managed to embezzle RD$1,231.9 million from the State, which was allegedly used to finance candidate Gonzalo Castillo in the PLD primaries. With this scheme, they allegedly misappropriated RD$704,298,350.00 from public funds, a sum that was allegedly disbursed through checks made out to Ventura's companies.
The name of the Construction Technology Consortium (CTC) is mentioned 71 times throughout the 2,120 pages of the file in which the Public Ministry requests preventive detention against the defendants in Operation Calamar.
The Public Prosecutor's Office indicated that those arrested in Calamar are preliminarily accused of "criminal association, embezzlement, collusion of officials, falsification of public and private documents, bribery and illicit campaign financing on an unprecedented scale, money laundering, among others.".
Among the institutions where there was misappropriation of state resources, he cites the Ministry of Finance, the Comptroller General of the Republic, the State Sugar Council (CEA), the General Directorate of National Assets, the General Directorate of National Cadastre and the Office of State Supervising Engineers (Oisoe), among others.
Algodonal Real Estate Company and code names
According to Pepca, in said document “the criminal structure” had a record of each case of expropriation and how the funds of each release authorized by the accused Ángel Donald Guerrero Ortiz were distributed, and what corresponded to the official candidate of the Dominican Liberation Party, PLD, the accused Gonzalo Castillo, who was identified with the code name “Official”.
The code names are cited in various parts of the request for the measure and are identified as follows: Ofic. = Gonzalo Castillo and José Ramón Peralta ; MM = Ramón Emilio Jiménez Collie (a) Mimilo; JA = José Arturo Ureña; FC = Fernando Crisóstomo; MX = Minister Donald Guerrero ; ER = Emilio César Rivas Rodríguez; OC = Daniel Omar Caamaño.
In the specific case of debt collection through assignment of debt, related to the real estate company El Algodonal SRL, which investigators estimate at 553,160,000.00, the structure allegedly kept 74% of that amount.
Among them the distribution would have been as follows: “Ofic. DOP 165,948,000.00= (30%); MX DOP 44,252,800.00 = (8%); ER DOP 27,658,000.00 = (5%); OC DOP 11,063,200.00 = (2%); MM DOP 22,126,400.00 = (4%); JA DOP 22,126,400.00 = (4%) and FC DOP 22,126,400.00 = (4%).
In other cases, he indicates, the entire amount collected remained in the hands of the accused.
A historic case of fraud
The Deputy Attorney General and head of the General Directorate of Prosecution of the Public Ministry, Yeni Berenice Reynoso, referred to the case as the largest in the country's history in the way public servants conspired to defraud the nation of billions of pesos.
“There’s no way this process won’t be declared complex, because public assets were affected in a way unprecedented in the country’s history. To date, this is the most complex case, in terms of how it operated, how various officials within the State colluded to divert millions of dollars from public funds,” he added
He asserted that the case involves "a network of organized crime, rarely seen in the region." He added that the case file prepared by the Public Prosecutor's Office to request coercive measures is "more than well-founded, more than proven, with evidence that could be considered abundant for this stage of the process.".
